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What I did for beer today

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I hit my LHBS for the rest of the ingredients to brew my Snowbound Porter. Bought some SNPA & Leinenkuge;'s hoppin helles. First brew I bought with Hoppin in the title & wasn't from Hoppin Frog in Akron...http://[URL=http://s563.photobucket.com/user/unionrdr/media/PICT0001_zpsf8db13ab.jpg.html] [/URL]
I believe I had this exact glass. Go dollar tree. :)

Glad you remembered the lube....

Bigger is always better ;)

We have 6 20lb tanks.
TWSS
 
Picked up the specialty grains for Gandhi-bot clone 2.0 and an American brown I will be brewing for my wife. Went to a one year anniversary party for a local brewery, Beer'd Brewing.
 
Checked the gravity on my hefeweizen, DIPA and Samuel Smith India Ale clone just now. All get to be bottled soon. Also been working figuring out what barleywine I'll be making soon; it'll be the last batch I'll be able to afford for a while so I want to make something really fun, so been thinking about it a lot.. Kinda want to make a Bigfoot clone from Sierra Nevada since BYO has a nice sounding recipe and it's good stuff.
 
Lets see... Yesterday I racked my RIS into a carboy (very very tasty) kegged 5 gallons of my 'something else' beer, brewed 10 gallons of house porter, scrubbed 2 carboys, and broke down the last 2lbs of bulk hops.
 
Cleaned/Sanitized a kicked keg along with the keezer beer line and finally got around to emptying the cap catcher, heheheheheh...........

2013-11-10 11.09.27.jpg
 
Gave away four hop crowns I propagated this summer- traded homebrews in the process.

Scoured my tun and reorganized my airlock parts collection.

Visited my aging beers in the cellar to give praise to the yeast deities residing there. _/\_
 
I cleaned up my my brew closet thanks to a super vigorous fermentation of the hefeweizen I brewed the other night. It went through the airlock and all over everything within a 3 foot radius. Lesson learned!
 
I cleaned up my my brew closet thanks to a super vigorous fermentation of the hefeweizen I brewed the other night. It went through the airlock and all over everything within a 3 foot radius. Lesson learned!

First time/ only that happened to me I walked down to my basement thinking it smells waaay to good down here.
 
Took my 18 mo old daughter to the LHBS to pick up ingredients for Orfy's Hobgoblin. She loved the grain room and yeast fridge. Not gonna lie, I might be brainwashing her into an obsession for craft beer...
 
Transferred my hops from pots to the good mother earth. We'll see what 2nd year brings.
Also bought some rolled oats for a toasted oatmeal cookie porter (yes I've been reading Radical Brewing). Any recipe suggestions are welcome.
 
Took my 18 mo old daughter to the LHBS to pick up ingredients for Orfy's Hobgoblin. She loved the grain room and yeast fridge. Not gonna lie, I might be brainwashing her into an obsession for craft beer...

My wife and almost-3-year-old came with me to the LHBS yesterday because I needed to get more yeast for a stalled porter on the way home from church. My daughter recognized the bottle cappers and knew exactly what they are for. She also knew the smack pack I bought contained yeastie beasts, which is what we call them at home.

I was so proud.

Pitched the yeast this morning.
 
Gotta wash out a couple more bottles from my Cougar Country IPA last night. boy,did it ever turn out great! Maybe brew the robust porter tomorrow. Didn't feel up to it today.
 
Brewed up Gandhi-bot clone 2.0 today. Pitched 6 hours ago and the yeast are already going to town. I rarely time these things properly but I was able to pitch my starter at high kreusen today, so that's pretty cool.
 
nukebrewer said:
Brewed up Gandhi-bot clone 2.0 today. Pitched 6 hours ago and the yeast are already going to town. I rarely time these things properly but I was able to pitch my starter at high kreusen today, so that's pretty cool.

When you pitch at "high krausen" do you throw the whole starter in when you pitch?
 
nukebrewer said:
Yeah. You would be missing out on a ton of viable yeast if you decanted.

I figured..it makes sense and is logical but I did not know that it could lead to a better beer though. Thats awesome i will try and shoot for this next time i brew. Since i started making starters ive always decanted.

Oh for beer today i gave a co worker a small list of must have add ons to his brew equipment as he moves on from all extract 2 gallon batches to extract with steeping 5 gallon batches.
 
I put 7 more of my IPA's in the fridge. gotta clean more bottles from last night after the break down in the dang snow storm. And I'm a little short on ice for the ice bath to brew my vanillla porter. What to do,what to do?... **F it,I got the grains crushed the hops outta the freezer,US-05 outta the fridge. Gunna git-r-done anyway. Cool days like this are made for fermenting!
12:46pm,got mash water heating now.
 
I got the robust porter in the fermenter yesterday afternoon. Pitched rehydrated US-05 @ 67F wort temp. Wife even helped clean up some of the brew day masacree! gotta finish cleanin after I give my L2 disc a break. I see the airlock is starting to build pressure atm. cool. The rehydrate did go pretty well. 400mL of tap water was only 61.4F,so at flame out I set it on the still hot electric burner. My All-Temp laser measured 73.4F in short order. got some foam on the rehydrate at about 1 hour per PDF's I've read.
 
I figured..it makes sense and is logical but I did not know that it could lead to a better beer though. Thats awesome i will try and shoot for this next time i brew. Since i started making starters ive always decanted.

Oh for beer today i gave a co worker a small list of must have add ons to his brew equipment as he moves on from all extract 2 gallon batches to extract with steeping 5 gallon batches.

I have never decanted and never had any issues. If you dont already, I would start practicing yeast ranching and not yeast washing. Start with a new yeast pack or vial, make double the amount of cells you need to pitch, and only dump pitch half while saving the other half for later use. You never need to buy new yeast and always have clean fresh yeast on hand, plus its very simple.
 
finsfan said:
I have never decanted and never had any issues. If you dont already, I would start practicing yeast ranching and not yeast washing. Start with a new yeast pack or vial, make double the amount of cells you need to pitch, and only dump pitch half while saving the other half for later use. You never need to buy new yeast and always have clean fresh yeast on hand, plus its very simple.

That sounds like a great idea. After you use the first half where do you store and save the other? I'm assuming the white lab vials or something similar? My Lhbs only sells wyeast so I will have to look into purchasing 5 or 6 similar sized vials on amazon. Also in regards to storage, fridge? Freezer?
 
That sounds like a great idea. After you use the first half where do you store and save the other? I'm assuming the white lab vials or something similar? My Lhbs only sells wyeast so I will have to look into purchasing 5 or 6 similar sized vials on amazon. Also in regards to storage, fridge? Freezer?

I just use mason jars. When I save the other half of a starter, it normally will fill 3 or 4 jars. I put these in the fridge for a few days until there is a noticeable yeast cake on bottom, then set them out to warm up to room temperature (6-24 hours). During that time, I microwave another jar half full with water until it boils, put the lid on immediately and shake to sanitize. Put that jar in the fridge to chill. Now you just decant all the starter wort out of the yeast jars, pour some of the chilled boiled water in each, shake to get all yeast off the bottom of the jar and combine all of them into one jar. You can fridge this for a long time as long as you put water on the yeast and not let it sit in the starter wort. Pretty easy process to keep clean yeast and never have to buy that strain again.
 
That sounds like a great idea. After you use the first half where do you store and save the other? I'm assuming the white lab vials or something similar? My Lhbs only sells wyeast so I will have to look into purchasing 5 or 6 similar sized vials on amazon. Also in regards to storage, fridge? Freezer?

Here is a write up that might be a little less confusing and how I learned how to do it. The only thing I do differently is make the stater double the amount of cells that I need so I know to only pitch half and save the other half while knowing how many cells I have ended up with to save.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/entries/yeast-harvesting-novel-approach.html
 
finsfan said:
I just use mason jars. When I save the other half of a starter, it normally will fill 3 or 4 jars. I put these in the fridge for a few days until there is a noticeable yeast cake on bottom, then set them out to warm up to room temperature (6-24 hours). During that time, I microwave another jar half full with water until it boils, put the lid on immediately and shake to sanitize. Put that jar in the fridge to chill. Now you just decant all the starter wort out of the yeast jars, pour some of the chilled boiled water in each, shake to get all yeast off the bottom of the jar and combine all of them into one jar. You can fridge this for a long time as long as you put water on the yeast and not let it sit in the starter wort. Pretty easy process to keep clean yeast and never have to buy that strain again.

Awesome I would not have thought to add water. Thanks. I have the yeast book by JZ and White and need to read it as soon as I'm finished studying for this promotional exam.
 
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